Rachel Vincent - The Stars Never Rise

“Melanie Kane, get back in line. Now.” Sister Cathy’s voice was sharper this time, and suddenly everyone was watching. Mellie looked at her. Then she looked at the line of her classmates. Then she looked at the door leading into the courtyard, where rain still poured in thick gray sheets.

My heart hammered in my chest, and I felt like I was on that precipice of disobedience with her.

Get back in line, Mellie.

Running wouldn’t get her out of the physical, and it would get her into serious trouble. The kind of trouble that would require a conference with our mother. Which would quickly land us in Church custody.

Melanie’s right hand twitched, and I knew what she’d decided a fraction of a second before she lurched for the double glass doors and threw her full weight at them. The doors flew open, and she disappeared into the rain.

There was a collective gasp from the sophomore class and a startled yelp from Sister Cathy as a gust of wind and rain pelted her navy-embroidered pale blue cassock in the two seconds it took the doors to fall shut in my sister’s wake. Then there was silence, except for a clap of thunder and the steady, loud patter of rain on the roof.

“Find her!” Sister Cathy shouted, soaked and obviously furious, and two of the sophomore class teachers sprinted for the exit, their cornflower cassocks flapping behind them.

I started to follow, blood racing through my veins, spurring me into action, but Sister Anabelle grabbed my arm and hauled me into the restroom alcove again.

“She’s just scared,” I said.

“I know,” Anabelle whispered. “It would be better if you find her and get her to come back voluntarily. Ready to atone. Disobeying a Church official is a sin, Nina.”

“I know.” Melanie was drawn to trouble like a cat to raw meat—she thrived on it—and I’d always known that eventually she’d make a mistake I couldn’t fix. I’d just hoped “eventually” would come a little later in life. And that it wouldn’t involve my sister disobeying a Church official in front of dozens of witnesses, then fleeing the scene.

What the hell was she thinking?

“Is there somewhere she goes when she’s upset?” Anabelle asked.

“Not lately.” But when we were little … I glanced over my shoulder at the sophomores still filing into the gym four at a time. “I’ll find her. Can you cover for me?”

“Of course. Go on.”

I made myself walk away from the gym, then into the courtyard through a different door, when I really wanted to run. The rain had slowed a little, but the day looked gray, viewed through the steady drizzle, and my hair was drenched again by the time I got to the dais. The only sounds were the constant loud patter of raindrops, the occasional roll of thunder, and the quick tap of my school shoes on the sidewalk.

Matthew Mercer looked up from the dais when he heard me coming, and one glance at his rain-soaked misery urged me to move faster.

If they’d force a five-year-old to kneel all day in the rain for blasphemy, what would they do to a disobedient fifteen-year-old fugitive? I couldn’t remember anyone else defying the Church so openly, except for … Clare Parker.

My stomach clenched around my breakfast at the memory.

One day, the year I was nine, Clare had refused to kneel for worship. They gave her three chances. When she still refused, Brother Phillip said refusing to recognize the Church’s authority was the first sign of possession. He called in an exorcist, and two hours later, Clare was sentenced. The exorcist said that since her possession was recent, her soul could be returned to the well of souls—if it were purified by fire.

They forced her to her knees on the dais, closed the steel cuffs above her calves, then burned her alive in front of the entire school.

She was seventeen years old.

What if they thought Melanie was possessed?

Terror pumped fire through my veins and pushed my feet faster. At the rear entrance to the administration building, I turned to make sure no one was watching, then slipped inside. My shoes squeaked on the tile and left wet footprints, but there was nothing I could do about that.

Careful not to slip, I snuck through the back hall, then ducked into the laundry room. When Mellie was little, she loved to hide in the bundles of freshly laundered sheets before they were folded and distributed in the children’s home attached to our school. The laundry was the only place I could think of to look for Mellie on campus, and at first I didn’t see her.

I’d almost decided to climb over the fence and go look for her at home, when the pile of clean white sheets in a huge wheeled cart moved.

“Melanie? It’s me. Come on out.”

But she didn’t move or make a sound, so I had to pull the sheets off her one by one and pile them on a table until I found my sister curled up in a ball at the bottom of the cart. Her hair was soaked, her braid destroyed. Her face was red and swollen from crying, and the terror in her eyes made her look about ten years old.

“Mellie, you have to go back. It’ll be okay if you apologize and take your punishment.”

Fasting? A week of silence? Public lashing? Any of those would be better than suspicion of possession.

“It’s not going to be okay.” Melanie sat up, sniffling, and wiped her nose with the back of one hand.

“Not if you don’t get up, it won’t. Hurry, before they decide you’re possessed.” Any reasonable person could see that she was just scared and upset. But the Church saw what it wanted to see, and it wouldn’t want to see a fifteen-year-old it simply couldn’t control.

Melanie shook her head slowly, and two fat tears rolled down her cheeks as she stared up at me. “I’m not possessed, Nina,” she said, her voice raw and hoarse. “I’m pregnant.”

“Pregnant …?” My voice sounded hollow, and when Melanie nodded, I sank to the floor on legs that would no longer hold me up.

No.

My sister climbed out of the cart, then knelt next to me on the floor, wrinkling her navy slacks and her drenched white blouse. “Nina, say something. I don’t know what to do.”

“Are you sure?” I grabbed her hand and squeezed it, looking for any sign of doubt in her eyes.

“Pretty sure. I missed last month entirely, and I’ve been feeling sick all week.” She sniffled and swiped one hand across her dripping nose again. “Not just in the morning, though. Kinda off and on all day.”